The Final Moment
by BohemianTwinkle
Summary: For a moment he had become the Duke that night at the Gothic Tower.


Author's apology: I know it's kind of a bit on the melodramatic side...but I like experimenting with parallel universe fics.  
  
For Kaitlin, who refuses to give love stories a happy ending.  
  
*~*  
  
'TELL ME YOU DON'T LOVE ME!' a horrible scream echoed through the rafters and almost reached the audience on the other side of the stage. His face was meshed over with water, his hair was wet and greasy from sweat and rain, and his heart was black and bruised from blow after blow.  
  
A silence followed. She looked at him with frightened eyes, blue ellipses stricken with fear and pupils growing so round as though they would burst. He sounded so sinister, so desperate, so helpless, so broken, so dangerous all at once like a ball of tangled threads, knotted and frayed.  
  
"Tell me!" he said to her forcefully through gritted teeth. His grip tightened on her fragile white arm as though he would snap it in two. Fury burned like hell through him, his ears were burning hot, his eyes marred with itchy tears not ready to fall, his hands held her roughly like a common criminal, his lower lip quivered with rage and he bit down on it.  
  
A moment passed and then another until he came back to reality.  
  
His eyes became shocked at the sight of her fear, wide blue oceans staring up at him trembling, his ears went cold at the vibrating sound of his voice, so foreign to him, so frightening. He let her go and stepped back.  
  
"Tell me you don't love me," he whimpered,  
  
The doors were open, the searing white lights of the stage burned down on them, boiling the tears in his eyes, making them shine like faulty diamonds.  
  
Specks of dust floated through the air between them, burning gold from the lights. The audience watched them, expectantly with bemused faces trying to work out the meaning behind the looks of shock and horror on the two actors faces. He could hear his heart beating so loudly in his ears, making his insides tremble and almost implode.  
  
After a long - and somewhat over dramatic pause to some audience onlookers – she spoke; words that sounded so perfectly rehearsed, so expertly delivered, in such an utterly heartbreaking voice.  
  
"I don't love you,"  
  
He would never forget her face. Never in all his life had he ever seen a face like it. Her eyes were marred with fear of him, her cheeks were hard and rigid, her lips thin and unforgiving. If she had ever loved him, he had ruined it in that moment.  
  
It took him a moment and a song to enchant her and a moment and a scream to break the spell. He felt a pain go through him, like a knife entering his stomach and spreading rapidly throughout the body. He choked on her words as they hung in the air, filling his throat and suffocating him like water.  
  
It wasn't what he'd expected, as enraged and wounded as he was; he never expected it, really, deep down inside. She was supposed to say the opposite of what she did, she was supposed to wrap her arms around him and kiss him again. But he'd destroyed that, all by himself. All by his own doing. For a moment he had become the Duke that night at the Gothic Tower. There was a thick red band forming about her wrists from where he had held her so tightly, that red would turn to bruises later.  
  
He jumped when Harold's booming maharaja voice broke the silence.  
  
"Hahaha! I am not fooled! Though he has shaved off his beard, and dons a disguise, my eyes do not lie! For it is he, the same Penniless Sitar Player," the audience murmured in comprehension, Harold saved the day again.  
  
He did not ask her why, like he would've, like he had before when she had come to say goodbye. He did not refuse to believe her. He did not insist that she was hiding something. He knew that everything was exactly as it seemed. The francs fell from his hand like snow onto the stage, the tears in his eyes followed.  
  
She lowered her gaze and she was gone from him forever.  
  
The sound of his footsteps as he walked towards the door was enough to hide the sound of the breaking of his heart. Harold's booming voice was the last thing he heard as he slid through the theatre doors.  
  
"The Sitar Player doesn't love you! See! He flees the Kingdom,"  
  
And Toulouse stood hidden in the ceiling trying to remember his line. 


End file.
